George Romero changed the face of American horror permanently with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, and while Romero was an admirer of the genre, he like many young filmmakers had simply planned to use the genre as a cheap way to break into the film business. However, Night of the Living Dead having such a broad and far-reaching cultural impact, almost immediately upon release typecast Romero as a "horror guy". This is a tag that the director initially fought against, by making his 2nd film an odd French New Wave inspired romantic comedy "There's Always Vanilla". He would begin to approach horror again with his third film (though it is not horror) Jack's Wife (Commonly released as Season of the Witch), and fully embraced the genre with his third film the Crazies. All 3 of these films have recently been released by Arrow Video in a deluxe box set, and now all 3 have been released separately by Arrow in excellent standalone editions. We will be focusing on the more the latter two titles Season of the Witch and The Crazies.

Season of the Witch (3.5/5)

    I remember first getting into the film's of George Romero in the 6th grade after realizing that Night of the Living Dead, one of the first horror video tapes I owned had sequels in Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, and further realizing that the filmmaker had made more horror then just the zombie variety. In exploring Romero’s other films, I had been told by a friend that "Season of the Witch" was boring, and not good at all. But this was the director of Dawn of the Dead, the greatest movie ever made! I had to see it. My friend was right, I was bored to tears, I never watched it again, until last week.

     Season of the Witch, originally titled Jack's Wife or Hungry Wives follows the life of Joan, the husband of "Jack". They have seemingly just moved into a new house, in a new "modern" suburb where everything is seemingly done for them, and she quickly gets bored with her life. To add some interest to her existence, she starts to do practice witchcraft after meeting Marion, a local woman who is known to be a witch.

    OK, so the first thing to know. Season of the Witch is not named to compete with the Halloween sequel, it is named after the Donovan song which populates its soundtrack. The reason I make this distinction is that the film is very much not a horror film. It has some surrealist imagery that borders on horror, which is why I suggest that this is Romero creeping back into horror territory, but it feels more or less like an American variation on something like Bergman's Persona (at times, not all the way through), while channeling some of John Cassavetes’ films as director.

    I can understand the film not working for me at 12, because my expectations were set to a horror film, and I got a domestic drama, and also one that was using tropes of European dramatic cinema, which I was far from being familiar. However, now the film works well as a drama with surrealist flourishes, and the work of a filmmaker still working to find his stylistic and tonal niche.

    Arrow Video presents Season of the Witch in a brilliant 1:37:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer. The film itself just inherently is soft and grainy and that comes through here. Colors are well reproduced, detail is solid, and the film just looks accurate to what I imagine it would have looked like in cinemas in the 70's. The audio is handled by an LPCM mono track in English. Everything here sounds quite solid and comes through clearly. Extras include a commentary with Travis Crawford, an interview with Romero and Guillermo Del Toro archival interviews , commentaries, and alternate opening titles and much more.

The Film (3.5/5)

Audio/Video (4/5)

Extras (3.5/5)

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The Crazies

    The Crazies begins with the murder of a wife, and the burning of a farm, which causes the injury of one child and death of another. This is not the act of a man in control of his own actions, but a man infected by "Trixie", a government virus that was leaked into the water of Evans City, PA. after a plane crash the week before, caused the virus to enter the towns water supply. Now the military, has taken over Evans City, and is rounding up its citizens and is trying to stop the spread of the virus before it can escape its borders. Meanwhile, the townspeople fearing being trapped and killed by the government are attempting to escape and rebel against the government, all the while many of them are succumbing to Trixie itself.

    The Crazies is the first film to see George Romero work his way into full blown horror since Night of the Living Dead. However, even though the people who fall victim to "Trixie" can be compared to zombies, it is not such a straight forward way to compare the horror between the two films.  The horror from the Crazies, comes less from the the virus, and its effect on people, and more from the chaos that both "Trixie", and government create in the town.

    Most of Romero's films before and after the Crazies usually center on a group of characters and a single narrative that is easy to follow. To a point so does the Crazies, however, in watching the Crazies on this time (probably my 6th watch), I couldn't help but see the genius of the filmmaking here is that there is not really one main character. Yes, we focus on Judy and David for much of the time, but the film cuts between so many characters and situations that Evans City itself seems to be the main character of the film, and the horror is the chaos unfolding as we watch the military and the virus take hold of the town.  This means everything from gun battles between citizens, and the masked militia to scenes of a self-immolating priest.

    I have had a mixed relationship with this film from my first viewing of it well over 15 years ago. Sometimes I'll put it on and I'll like it, other times it won't click with me at all. On this recent viewing everything just clicked and I feel I just connected with the controlled chaos horror that Romero created with the Crazies, and with the new Arrow Blu-ray it  has been highly raised in my estimation.

    The Crazies has been presented by Arrow in another excellent restoration 1:85:1 1080p AVC encoded. Everything looks natural, but well detailed, the color palette reflects the natural look of the film itself.  Audio presented in a LPCM mono track comes across quite clearly with no issues. Extras include a Travis Crawford commentary, a location documentary, 2 interviews with Lynn Lowry, a Lee Hessel audio interview, behind the scenes footage, image galleries, alternate opening titles, trailers and TV spots.

The Film (4/5)

Audio/Video (4/5)

Extras (4/5)